Plain talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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I am a great admirer of Bernard Shaw's works and every now and again I pick up one of his plays to read. One of my favourites, however, is a volume that contains three plays John Bull's Other Island, How She Lied to Her Husband and Major Barbara. In his preface to the three plays, Shaw, as usual, deals with many issues, one of which is called "The Denshawai Horror".

In his preface, Shaw explains what had happened: "Denshawai is a little Egyptian village in the Nile Delta. It has pigeon houses; for its villagers keep pigeons just as an English farmer keeps poultry. Try to imagine the feeling of an English village if a party of Chinese officers suddenly appeared and began shooting the ducks, the geese, the hens, the turkeys and carried them off, asserting that they are wild birds."

Then he goes on to describe how a party of English officers went pigeon-shooting in the village of Denshawai. When the inhabitants complained they received no redress. The law failed them in their hour of need, says Shaw. On 13 June 1913, four khaki clad British officers drove to the village, accompanied by another officer on horseback. The head of a peasant family, named Hassan Mahfouz warned the officers through a dragoman who accompanied them. But the warning had no effect. The officers began shooting the villagers' pigeons. The villagers remonstrated and finally seized a gun of the youngest officer. It went off in the struggle and wounded three men and the wife of a villager called Abdel-Nabi, a young man of twenty five. The villagers thought the wife was dead.

Here Shaw gives again a comparison with the English village, and how the feelings of the Egyptian villagers were, "much as if our imaginary Chinese officers, on being interfered with in their slaughter of turkeys, had killed an English farmer's wife."

Besides Abdel-Nabi, other villagers joined in and a quarrel began. Abdel Nabi hit the supposed murderer of his wife. Villagers began to throw stones at the officers. The officers began to run in the hope of bringing help from a nearby camp. One of the officers, after a long race in the Egyptian afternoon sun, got to the next village and there dropped, smitten by a sunstroke, of which he died.

It is amazing how Shaw described the incident in details, giving the names and ages o the villagers. His account reads like a narrative, and in a vivid fashion he tries and succeeds in bringing the scene to the English reader. What is more, he shows great sympathy with the villagers. No English mob, he says, under similar provocation, would have behaved any better.

Shaw goes on to describe what did ensue. In his usual sarcasm he says that Abel-Nabi, in consideration of what had happened to his wife was only sentenced to penal servitude for life, and his wife, remarks Shaw as not punished at all -- not even charged with stealing the shot which was found in her person. And lest Abdel-Nabi should feel lonely at twenty five in beginning penal servitude for the rest of his days, another young man was sent to penal servitude for life with.

No such clemency was shown to Hassan Mahfouz, says Shaw mockingly. "An Egyptian pigeon farmer who objects to British sport, threatens British officers and gentlemen when they shoot his pigeons, and actually hits these officers with a substantial stick, is clearly a ruffian to be made an example of," says Shaw. Penal servitude for life was not enough for a man of sixty who looked seventy and might not have lived to suffer five years of it. So Hassan was hanged, but as a special mark of consideration for his family, continues Shaw, he was hanged in full view of his own house, with his wives and children and grand children enjoying the spectacle from the roof.

Total for the morning's work, writes Shaw: "four hanged, two sentenced to penal servitude for life, one to fifteen years penal servitude, six to seven years of penal servitude, three to imprisonment for a year with hard labour and fifty lashes, and five to fifty lashes." This is, contends Shaw, how justice was meted out in Egypt by the British.